Native Peoples of the Southeast

Native Peoples of the Southeast — page 1 — ARCTI C SS U B AA R C T I C N O R T H W E S T C O A S T C A L I F O R N I A P L A TTTT EE AAA U G RRRRRRR EE AA T PP LL A I NN S TT SS A E T HH S N O RRRRRRRRRRRR T A E H SOUT B AA SIN ST E W HH T U O S SOUTHEAST REGION OF NORTH AMERICA CULTURAL REGIONS OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA Plateau Northwest Coast California Plains Southeast Southwest Great Basin Northeast Subarctic Arctic Other Cultural area border International border State province border

Native Peoples of the Southeast — page 2 — INTRODUCTION The elders gathered their people for a council They decided to travel in search of a new homeland The creator of all things had given the people a special gift It was a sacred pole to guide the way It was called the kohta falaya or the long pole Every night the people planted the pole in the ground pointing it straight up to the sky By morning the pole leaned east toward the rising sun The people followed the direction of the sacred pole They were led by the chief of the Chickasaw CHICK-uh saw and the chief of the Choctaw CHOK-taw They crossed grasslands and hills and a great river wider than they had ever seen They walked for days months and years One night they camped at a place called Nanih Waiya The next morning the pole still stood perfectly straight The people knew they were home A Long History The Chickasaw and the Choctaw tell this sacred story of how they came to live in the southeastern United States The Southeast has been home to many American Indian peoples for at least fifteen thousand years Some of these 5

Native Peoples of the Southeast — page 3 — PEOPLES OF THE SOUTHEAST The Southeast region was the original home of many American Indian nations This map shows the areas where some of them lived before Europeans arrived in the region Monacan Monacan e e e e k k c c u u Y Y hi hi C C h h ero ero Catawba Catawba CreekCreek Seminole Seminole Timucua Timucua Chickasaw Chickasaw Tunica Tunica OfoOfo Natchez Natchez Choctaw Choctaw Biloxi Biloxi Chitimacha Chitimacha CULTURAL AREAS Plains Southeast Northeast Other Cultural area border International border State province border Calusa Calusa people may have come from the north Others may have come to the Southeast from Mexico and Cuba Peoples such as The Mississippians or Mound Builders built temples of huge mounds of earth as early as 800 CE The biggest Mound Builder city called Cahokia was built on the Mississippi River in present-day Illinois The city’s largest mound 66

Native Peoples of the Southeast — page 4 — The Nanih Waiya Mound in Mississippi is 140 feet 43 m wide covered 16 acres 6 5 hectares and stood 100 feet 31 meters high The remains of Mound Builder settlements have been found in Mississippi Louisiana Georgia Arkansas and Florida The Choctaw Natchez NATCH-is and other groups probably descended from the Mound Builders The Creek who call themselves Muskogee muss-KOH-ghee are a union of several peoples who also descended from the Mound Builders This union is sometimes called the Creek Confederacy Language Families Historically the Southeast Indians spoke languages from four language families Some groups spoke languages called isolates which are unlike any other in the world The Calusa cuh-LOO-suh Tequesta tuh-KESS tuh and Tunica TYOON-uh-cuh spoke isolate languages 7

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